Rowie's Scribbles

I'll be honest: I never heard of SSMH (Society for the Severely Mentally Handicapped) until my music school principal informed that our string ensemble will perform for the event.  SSMH provides day care and education for the severely mentally disabled children and youths; these special children require regular therapy besides love and care. The society also aims to raise awareness of the needs of these special children and the work performed by SSMH to help the children gain more independence.  The objective of the charity carnival is to spread that awareness and to raise funds enabling SSMH to assist these children in gaining a better future. The children have cerebral palsy and there are full time therapists to aid them.  So if you're free on that weekend, drop by and lend a helping hand! :) I'll be performing with friends on the Sun; also there will be more than 40 booths offering various goodies ranging from fashion, food and so much more! The booklets ...

I found Beethoven's music intimidating; I always have this image of a furious, wild-haired genius banging away at the keyboard as if it couldn't hold the immense power of his music. I just finished The World of the String Quartet offered by Curtis Institute of Music via Coursera; that was a very enlightening course so I was intrigued by Curtis' other offering on Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas , delivered by the engaging Mr Biss who is an accomplished pianist in his own right.  This course is an open course; ie no deadlines, free and it is updated with new material. I finished it 2 weeks ago and this week a new set of lectures were added. yippee! Well Beethoven's piano sonatas, as I've learned, is so immense; it was pleasant to delve deeper into the structure of the piece, the history and what makes the piece uniquely Beethoven's.  I've gained a better appreciation of the genius in Beethoven's piano sonatas and I am reminded again of t...

I have to admit I've forgotten so much of classical music history that I learned during my piano classes and I joined this offering by Yale University as I wanted to refresh my memory and revisit classical history in a more informal manner.  This course was A-MA-ZING!  Why? Well the lecturer Dr. Craig Wright is the main reason I was excited every week for lecture videos as he exudes so much warmth, I feel like I'm getting a personable one-to-one class! He breaks down classical music without detracting its very complexity yet eases us into understanding its evolution towards the music that we know today. The lecture videos impart top quality content; may it be excerpts from his classes at Yale, or a tour of old pianos at the museum. We learned the background of key composers and why they wrote the music in such a way. The connection between music and history + art was very well elaborated and I have a richer perspective on the beauty of classical music. There we...

I enrolled for Origins offered by the University of Copenhagen after Useful Genetics . I thoroughly enjoyed this MOOC for several reasons: 1) I've always been fascinated by the origin of life There are times when I wonder how did I become what I am? How did the metabolisms occuring inside me even as I type this get "programmed"? How can the orca (or killer whale) be more closely related to wolves than each other? I think humans are naturally curious about where we come from and this course addresses the questions that I'm sure many of us think of. The course addresses the big questions and presents the theories in an unbiased manner. 2) The lecture videos seem to "bring" me into the classroom The presenter is not the same every week, the Natural History Musuem brings "specialist" lecturers to share their experience and their knowledge with us. As such, sometimes we're walking along the cliffs to study rock formation patterns or browsin...

Useful Genetics is the first course I enrolled for with Coursera. Instructed by Prof. Rosie Redfield from the University of British Columbia, I signed up because the introductory video brimmed with the promise that I'll learn stuff that's useful and cool. Being a nerd, this course was right up my alley and I was very enthusiastic.  The course duration was 12 weeks; every week there's a new module comprising several lecture videos (5-9 videos, each about 15-40 min long) and at the end of the week there's a graded quiz to test our understanding of the module. Supporting aids include practice quiz and free online textbook. There are discussion forums where students took to analyzing the lecture videos, the quizzes and even discuss genetic issues or news.  There's also a student wiki and peer-wise, done by students for students to aid the learning process. Unfortunately I only focused on watching the video and completing the quizzes due to my busy schedule; ...